Counterphobic attitude is a response to anxiety that, instead of fleeing the source of fear in the manner of a phobia, actively seeks it out, in the hope of overcoming the original anxiousness.[1]

In terms of avoidant personality disorder, the counterphobic represents the less usual, but not totally uncommon, response of apparently seeking out what is feared:[2]codependents may fall into a subcategory of this group, hiding their fears of attachment in over-dependency.[3]

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Dare-devil activities are often undertaken in a counterphobic spirit, as a denial of the fears attached to them - a denial that may be only partially successful.[4]Acting out in general may have a counterphobic source,[5] reflecting a false self over-concerned with compulsive doing to preserve a sense of power and control.[6]

Sex is a key area for counterphobic activity, sometimes powering hypersexuality in people who are actually afraid of the objects they believe they love.[7] Adolescents, fearing sex play, may jump over to a kind of spurious full sexuality;[8] adults may overvalue sex to cover an unconscious fear of the harm it may do.[9] Such a counterphobic approach may indeed be socially celebrated[10] in a postmodern vision of sex as gymnastic performance or hygiene[11] - fuelled by what Ken Wilbur described as "an exuberant and fearless shallowness".[12]

Traffic accidents have been linked to a counterphobic, manic attitude in the driver.[13]

Didier Anzieu saw Freud's theorisation of psychoanalysis as a counterphobic defence against anxiety through intellectualisation - permanently ruminating on the instinctive, emotional world that was the actual object of fear.[17]

Wilhelm Fliess has been seen as playing the role of counterphobic object for Freud during the period of the latter's self-analysis.[18]

Otto Fenichel considered that underdoing systematised counterphobic defences was only a first step in therapy, needing to be followed by analysis of the original anxiety itself.[19] He also considered that psychological trauma could break down counterphobic defences, with results that "may be very painful for the patient; they are, from a therapeutic point of view, favorable".[20]

David Rapaport emphasised the need for caution and extreme slowness in analyzing counterphobic defences.[21]